Book 1 Title: ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石

Before I proceed, for those who do not know Hiragana and Katakana yet read my post on the Japanese Writing System.

ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石
Harii Pottaa to kenja no ishi.
Harry Potter and wise man’s stone (literal translation)

The Japanese Harry Potter title contains ひらがな, カタカナand 漢字 (kanji: chinese characters) characters. Can you distinguish them?

ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石

Vocabulary:

賢者　－　けんじゃ　－　kenja
Literally means wise man ( 賢 – wise; 者 – person）
＊賢 is the kanji for kashikoi 賢い （かしこい）which obviously means wise, smart, or clever.

石　－　いし　－　ishi
stone, gem

Grammar:

There are two grammar points in the title, and they are very basic ones: と and の.

と means “and” while
の in this case is equivalent to ‘s.

The above, however, are just one of the many usages of と and の.

One last thing that you may not have noticed is the middle dot ・ between ハリー and ポッター. This interpunct is used to separate transcribed foreign words in katakana. If there was no ・ it would be hard to differentiate words from each other. An example to illustrate that is 「キャントバイミーラヴ」.

Also, I noticed that after typing Harry Potter without the dot, the middle dot is actually automatically added. Now why do you think is that?

 

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